Sony clarifies 'legacy' statement for Vitas. Still expecting a "decrease in portable business"

In this week's financial call with investors (which also narrowed down Uncharted 4's release date), Sony boss Andrew House caused a minor stir by referring to 'legacy hardware' while talking about PS Vita.

Sony has since clarified in a statement that this was referring to first generation Vitas: “What Andy mentioned as ‘legacy platform’ was a part of the write-off the PS Vita component for the first generation of PS Vita, which is no longer available in the market, a spokesperson said. And he did not directly mean the current PS Vita and PS TV models, which are available in the market. Our portable business will be continued".

Speaking to investors about operating income changes from previous forecasts, Sony Computer Entertainment president and CEO House talked his way through this slide:

Moving through it point by point he said that "on the positive side we saw a far greater than expected growth of the PlayStation 4 platform. Unfortunately, a negative was posed by PlayStation 3’s faster than expected decline, really which is a mirror image of PlayStation 4’s very rapid rise".

He made the Vita statement when he got to point 4, saying, "As you’re all aware we took a write-off on components for some of our legacy platforms".

While the later statement issued by Sony makes that sound a little less final, House did go on to say, "we will continue to see a decrease in PlayStation 3 platform sales, as well as a decrease in portable business, notably in the US and EU. The platform remains pretty strong and vibrant in Asia and Japan".